Preparing for State Health Department Accreditation: Pivotal Roles for Public Health Surveillance

Introduction On January 24, 2014, the Public Health Accreditation Board (PHAB) released, to the public, its Standards & Measures Version 1.5 guidance document for voluntary public health department accreditation. 1 Specifically, Standard 1.2 of the guidance encompasses data collection. Two measures of Standard 1.2 stipulate the requirements of surveillance and their purposes in the context of PHAB accreditation. First, according to Measure 1.2.1A: 24/7 surveillance system or set of program surveillance systems, the purpose of the measure is to assess the health department’s process for collecting and managing health data for public health surveillance. Second, according to Measure 1.2.2A: Communicate with Surveillance Sites, the purpose of the measure is to assess the health department’s regular contact with sites who report surveillance data to the health department. Health departments that are applying for voluntary accreditation through PHAB beginning July 1, 2014, must adhere to the current Standards & Measures Version 1.5 guidance document. Given the recent effective date of the application period under Standards & Measures Version 1.5, there are very few, if any, examples of required documentation that state health departments (SHDs) must submit in order to meet each public health surveillancespecific measure. Accreditation document libraries provided examples for health department applicants under Standards & Measures Version 1.0. Because they are no longer applicable to accreditation, examples pertaining to Standards & Measures Version 1.0 have been removed from many documentation library websites. We specifically aim to highlight one state’s informatics approach to meeting the documentation requirements of PHAB’s Standards & Measures Version 1.5, in respect to public health surveillance measures. Due to the dearth of documentation examples for PHAB’s Standards & Measures 1.5, Standard 1.2 public health surveillance measures, this perspective could be helpful to other SHDs seeking voluntary accreditation exemplifying an approach to identification of process(es) and/or protocol(s) for the collection, review, and analysis of comprehensive surveillance data on multiple health conditions from multiple sources.